Myths and Legends of the World

Sacrifice

Many religious ceremonies have included sacrifice, the act of giving up
something of value and offering it to a
deity.
Worshipers may make a sacrifice to win the favor of the deity, to give
thanks, or to maintain a good relationship with the god. Myths from around
the world contain many examples of sacrifices in which animals, humans,
and even gods shed blood or die. Sometimes the sacrifice is linked with
creation or with the continuation of life on earth. People also make
offerings of precious items such as flowers, wine, and incense or a
portion of the fruit or grain collected during a harvest.

deity
god or goddess

Meaning and Methods of Sacrifice.
One type of sacrifice involves the offering of blood or life. According
to one theory, the

*
See
Names and Places
at the end of this volume for further information.

One type of sacrifice, which was practiced by the Aztecs of Mexico,
involved blood offerings to feed the gods. Aztec priests conducted
elaborate ceremonies of human sacrifice.

practice of blood sacrifice was based on the belief that life is precious,
even divine. When freed from an earthly body, life returned to its sacred
source. In ancient Rome, a person performing a sacrifice said to the god,
"Be thou increased by this offering." The idea behind this
type of sacrifice was not pain, suffering, or death. Rather, life was
being returned to the divine world so that the gods, in turn, would
continue to give life to the human world.

Other theories provide different explanations for blood sacrifice. One
suggests that it began as a form of magic. Another says that sacrifice may
have been viewed as a symbolic meal that the community shared with its
deity or as a reenactment of creation myths. Still another tells that
sacrifice may have been seen as a way of focusing and controlling
aggression within the community.

Hunting peoples generally sacrificed game animals, while herding and
farming peoples used domestic animals such as sheep, goats, chickens, and
cattle. Certain types of animals were regarded as the most appropriate
sacrifices for particular purposes or for particular deities. Dark-colored
animals, for example, might be offered to deities of the
underworld,
while an all-white animal might be seen as the best gift for a sky god.

The sacrifice of humans has been known in many parts of the world. There
is also evidence that in some communities animals were eventually
substituted for human victims. The method of slaughter generally involved
either blood (flowing freely or offered in a ceremonial vessel), fire (to
carry the sacrifice to the god), or both. Sometimes, however, the person
to be sacrificed was strangled, hanged, or drowned.

A special person, such as a ruler, priest, head of household, or older
member of the community, usually supervised or carried out the sacrifice.
The sacrifice was made in front of a group—it was too important an
act to be performed privately Special
rites,
such as ceremonial bathing or fasting, often accompanied the sacrifice.
The sacrificial offering might be placed on an altar or before a statue of
a deity or burned in a sacred fire so that the smoke would carry its scent
to the heavens.

Mythic Sacrifices.
Many creation myths involve self-sacrifice by gods or
primal
beings. In an early Hindu myth, Purusha is the primal being who allows
himself to be dismembered so that creation can take place. His eye becomes
the sun, his head the sky, his breath the wind, and so on. Purusha became
a symbol of the acts of sacrifice that kept the cosmos stable. The
mythology of the Aztecs of central Mexico told how two of the gods formed
the
universe by splitting a goddess in half, so that one part of her became
the sky and the other part became the earth. The Aztecs performed
large-scale, violent rites of human sacrifice as a way of repaying the
goddess and the other deities for the violence and sacrifice of creation.
In Norse* mythology, Odin, the chief of the gods, made a kind of
self-sacrifice by hanging on the World Tree Yggdrasill for nine days to
gain magical knowledge. For this reason, the Norse sometimes sacrificed
war captives to Odin by hanging them, and Odin became known as the god of
the hanged.

Sacrifice is often an act of worship or obedience. In the book of Genesis
in the Bible, God tells Abraham to take his son Isaac to the top of a
mountain and sacrifice him. Abraham builds an altar and prepares to
sacrifice his son when a voice from heaven tells him to stop, saying,
"Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from
me your son, your only son." Turning around, Abraham notices a ram
caught by its horns in a bush. He releases Isaac and sacrifices the ram
instead.

Some myths present sacrifice as a way of setting right the relationship
between people and gods. The Kikuyu people of Kenya in eastern Africa tell
of a time when no rain fell for three years. The crops dried up, and the
people asked their magician what they should do. After performing a
magical ceremony, he told them to bring goats to buy a maiden named
Wanjiru. The next day everyone gathered around Wanjiru, who began to sink
into the ground. When her family tried to help her, those around gave them
goats, so the family let her sink. As Wanjiru sank inch by inch into the
ground, rain began to fall. By the time she disappeared into the ground,
the rain was pouring down. Afterwards, a young warrior who loved Wanjiru
went to the place where she had disappeared. Letting himself sink into the
underworld, he found Wanjiru, brought her back to the surface, and married
her.

prophecy
foretelling of what is to come; also something that is predicted

Sacrifice may be linked to divination, or foretelling the future. The
Druids* of ancient Britain sacrificed both animals and humans in the
belief that they could read the future in the victims' dying movements or
in the patterns of their intestines. In the story of Sunjata, told by the
Mandingo people of Mali in West Africa, a king sacrificed a bull to
acknowledge a
prophecy.
A hunter predicted that if the king agreed to marry a hideous young
woman, their child would become a great ruler. In Central America, the
Mayan Vision Serpent ceremony—held to consult with the dead and
determine the future—included offerings of blood drawn from the
king.